Use the Reformed Teacher Observation Protocol (RTOP) with your student teachers. RTOP is a validated research tool developed by the Arizona Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers that identifies the extent to which reform-based practices have been incorporated into teaching. The RTOP consists of 25 multiple-choice prompts that ask the observer to evaluate the lesson design, content, and classroom culture over the course of one classroom period, yielding a score between 0 for a completely traditional or “unreformed” lesson and 100 for a completely interactive or “reformed” lesson.
Although it does not cover all the facets of quality instruction, the RTOP scoring rubric does provide a good starting point for beginning teachers to think about interactive and student-centered instruction. PhysTEC sites’ RTOP scores suggest that their students teachers have gained substantial mastery of interactive teaching methods, and are able to build on their experiences, as scores nearly always improved from one observation to the next for a given teacher. RTOP has also proven very useful at many project sites a mentoring tool, which can serve as a starting point for a discussion of pedagogical technique and strategies.
